Ikonika - Edits EP

Ikonika - Edits EP
None of the tracks on Ikonika's Edits EP are new per se, but the sheer enjoyment factor is hard to deny: These are some of the best tracks of the year. When presented together on Contact, Love, Want, Have, each melted with the next creating a perfectly-sequenced series of computer R&B, turning the twin dubstep and funky sounds into a single liquid mass. Collected here, though, the tracks assert their own individual identities, and Ikonika's sonic toolbox reveals itself to be deceptively diverse. As it turns out, sometimes context is everything.

The A-side goes militarist with the chugging alarm call of "Video Delays," which breaks out into desperate synth trills and icy rave sections, finding rapture in fear-induced sweat, while "They Are All Losing the War" has a cheeky Mission Impossible strut, primed for some imaginary action movie. The other side is more playful: "Psoriasis" is funky grime, the delirious synth jumping between beats like some intense game of hop-scotch, while "Look (Final Boss Stage)" attempts to approximate the sort of cartoonish dread as "War." The detuned and decaying synth moans send it into near-atonality, held together only by the fascinatingly nimble sub-bass bouncing from wall to wall as if desperately trying to escape its invisible constraints.